


What Money Can't Buy

by Calacious



Series: Comfort in November and December 2020 [18]
Category: Mike & Molly
Genre: Comfortember 2020, F/M, First Day of School, Post canon, Self-Indulgent, Teacher Blues, Teacher Feels, going back to school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27809560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: As Molly takes her children to their first day of school, she contemplates her life as a teacher.
Relationships: Molly Flynn-Biggs/Mike Biggs
Series: Comfort in November and December 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996825
Kudos: 1
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	What Money Can't Buy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the comfortember prompt: Going back to school/work
> 
> This one is a bit self-indulgent.

Molly isn’t sure how she feels about this. It’s been years since she set foot in a school, years since she’d left teaching via her classroom window rather than the double doors at the front of the prison-like building that she’d whittled away countless hours of her life in. It hadn’t been the classiest of moves (not by a long shot), but she’d felt so smothered and undervalued as a teacher. It was a thankless job. She’d felt trapped, and knew that she had more to offer the world than teaching. She had dreams she wanted to pursue that a teacher’s paltry salary would not allow her to achieve. 

As a best-selling author, she has money, fame, some of the freedom that she’d craved as a teacher (publishers have their own set of demands, and she’s not as free as she’d dreamed she would be). More importantly, though, she has a family that she loves very much. 

As she steps onto the campus where William and Peggy-Jo will be attending kindergarten and pre-school (she’d homeschooled them last year, and she’s not going through another year of that), she’s hit with a wave of nostalgia. The tears that gather in her eyes are not for her son and daughter who she’s sending off to school for the first time, but for her former students who, for a short period of time, had been hers to mother and care for (while in the classroom, and sometimes outside of the classroom, because a teacher’s day never ends when the final bell rings). 

She wonders how her kids are doing. How many of them have grown up to be fine, upstanding citizens, and how many Mike, or Carl, might have arrested. Some of her kids are in high school, some have graduated and moved on to college. Her first group is out in the workforce now. Her mind wanders to Becky, and Jennifer, little Paul who always had the sniffles, and Tony who wanted to become a professional baseball player. 

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” William asks. 

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Molly says, wiping at her eyes. “I’m just going to miss you, is all.”

“But, I’ll be back home in no time at all,” William says wisely. “That’s what Daddy said.”

“You’re right,” Molly says, forcing a smile, and taking William’s hand. She wonders how long she’ll be able to get away with holding her baby’s hand in public. 

She walks William to his classroom, greets the teacher, a perky blonde-haired, blue-eyed stars in her eyes, young woman, and silently wishes her luck because she’s going to have her hands full with this class. Molly can tell. 

Peggy-Jo is not as confident as her big brother is. She clings to Molly’s hand, and refuses to let go when they reach her classroom. 

“Peg, don’t you want to go play with the others?” Molly asks. She’s sitting down on one of the many round rugs in the room (other mothers and fathers are doing the same with their little ones who don’t seem to want to stay), and Peggy-Jo’s on her lap. The little girl buries her face into her mother’s neck, and Molly rubs circles in her back.

“I don’t want to play,” Peggy-Jo says, sniffling. “I want to stay home with you and bake and write a book.”

“Tell you what,” Molly says. “How about if, when you come home from school, we bake your daddy’s favorite cake, and write him a silly story?”

“Why can’t I do that now?” she asks. 

“Because, your teacher, Miss Grace really wants to meet you, and teach you all sorts of wonderful things,” Molly says, reminiscing about the early days of her career as teacher, when she was fresh and everything was new and shiny, and she’d thought that she would always be a teacher, because it was her calling in life. 

“Really?” Peggy-Jo asks, leaning back to look Molly in the face. She’s got her grandmother’s looks down pat, and Molly suppresses a shiver. 

“Really,” Molly says, holding out a pinky to lock it with her daughter’s in a promise.

Peggy-Jo frowns, and tilts her head as she takes in the rest of the room. She glances from child to child as though measuring them, and then her gaze lands on her classroom teacher, Miss Grace. She’s an older woman, thin, white hair held tightly in a bun. She’s wearing a billowy skirt that makes Molly think of faeries. She’s got a huge smile on her face, and Molly can practically feel the happiness emanating from the older woman, even from a whole room away.

She wonders if she made her students feel as loved and welcome as this woman clearly does, and shakes herself out of that line of thinking. She’s given up teaching, and it was for the best. 

“What do you think?” Molly asks. “Will you let Miss Grace teach you?” 

Peggy-Jo nods, and then climbs out of her lap. She makes a beeline for her teacher. Molly watches for a minute, smiling when Miss Grace leans down to talk with Peggy-Jo, her radiant smile easing any discomfort Molly might have felt at leaving her daughter at preschool for half the day. 

As if sensing Molly’s eyes on her, Miss Grace raises her head, and gives Molly a wink. She then takes Peggy-Jo by the hand and leads her over to a group of children, introducing them to each other. 

Molly is forgotten in that moment. A third wheel who is no longer needed. There’s a momentary pang of jealousy, and then she files out of the room with the other parents who’d managed to extricate themselves from their preschoolers. 

There’s a buzz of talk about how great Miss Grace is, how they’re happy she’s their child’s teacher this year. Molly lets it wash over her, even as she wonders how parents talked about her, if they were happy to get Ms. Flynn as their child’s teacher that year, or if they’d been indifferent. 

“Miss Flynn?” an excited voice calls her name, and Molly is dragged from her contemplation to find a young woman, her son’s teacher, staring at her. 

“Has William already done something wrong?” Molly asks. He can sometimes be a handful, and he’s stubborn, like his father. 

“Oh, no, William’s wonderful,” she’s quick to reassure her. “It’s just...I don’t know if you remember me, but--”

“Becky?” Molly says, finally recognizing the young woman standing before her. The little girl who stood up in class and said that she wanted to be a teacher one day.

Becky nods. “I just wanted to say,” she says. “That you are the reason I became a teacher. You were my favorite teacher, you were so patient, and funny. You were kind to me, and I wanted to say, thank you. I know that’s not something teachers hear very often, so I wanted to make sure that I told you that.”

Heart in her throat, and tears in her eyes once more, Molly forgoes words, and gives Becky a hug. “No matter what happens today, remember that tomorrow is a new day, and those children are lucky to have you for their teacher,” she says, knowing that they were words she’d needed to hear every now and again when she’d been a teacher. 

“Thank you,” Becky says. “I’m so excited to have William in my class. I only hope that I’m half the teacher you were.”

Molly’s certain that Becky’s a better teacher than she ever was, because in spite of feeling like it was her calling in life, it was never Molly’s passion, and it’s clear that teaching is Becky’s passion, and has been since she was a fourth grader sitting in Ms. Flynn’s classroom, eager to learn everything that Molly had to teach her. She doesn’t say any of that, though. Instead, she gives Becky another hug, and waves goodbye to William, who’s watching from just inside the room. 

She knows that she's leaving William and Peggy-Jo in good hands as she exits the school grounds. Miss Grace and Becky will take care of her babies, and she’ll be able to get back to her writing. 

Teaching may not have been her true calling in life, but when she’d been at it, she’d given it her all, maybe not as passionately as Becky, and Miss Grace, but she’d done the best that she could with what she’d had at the time. It might have been a thankless job (most of the time), and she might not have been able to do everything she’d wanted to on her teacher’s salary, but there are some things, like seeing her student all grown up and successful, that money can’t buy. Would she go back to teaching if given the chance? No. Does she regret the years she spent teaching her fourth graders? Not on your life.


End file.
